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http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20728-wildheart/
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As perhaps the last vestige of grown-folks carnality in mainstream music, modern R&B trades in the archetypes of masculinity; sweaty abs and dirty talk pushed by loverboys (Usher) and bad boys (Jodeci). Prince's flamboyance remains one of the biggest exceptions in the genre's long and storied history, and the years since his purple reign are dotted with lonely acolytes: In 2003, André 3000 took a shot at hip-hop's rancorous masculinity—with the help of a smoking pink gun—on his rap-&-B manifesto, The Love Below. Some might say the tension of conforming to one-dimensional manhood contributed to D'Angelo's post-Voodoo unspooling.
The current R&B landscape is painstakingly virile: From Jeremih to Trey Songz, Ty Dolla $ign to PARTYNEXTDOOR, men are singing about sex and love. But all of these supposed libertines are focused on the primacy of male pleasure, treating their sexual experiences with all the reverence of a bunch of wadded-up tissues. On Wildheart, his third full-length album, Miguel, the writhing, pompadoured soul singer, has a similar focus, but it's sex-positive instead of sex-obsessed, a crucial difference. Languorous and detailed, it transcends the genre's established narratives with a focus on pleasure and partnership instead of one-sided pursuit. If Frank Ocean is young soul's prismatic, consciousness-expanding Marvin Gaye, Miguel's the reliable Al Green. The first words on this album—"Don't ever sell yourself short... Trust your intuition... You know the plan, conjectures of society," from the reverb-y opener "A Beautiful Exit"—are a testament to how Miguel's grown from radio-baiting R&B archetype to a maker of high-concept, genre-splicing pop music.
Miguel has occupied a unique space in the awkward "alt-R&B" narrative of the last few years. Amidst the washed out presets and drum machines and drugged-out boasting of his peers, he was a guitar-toting outlier, more of a throwback to a sensual showboat like Ginuwine instead of a self-loathing narcissist like the Weeknd. The nag champa-tinged smokiness of earlier songs like "All I Want Is You", or the glowing synth arpeggios on "Adorn" and fuzzed out scales on "Gravity" expressed something more wholesome, hopeful, and musically psychedelic. (Even when he sang about drugs on "Do You…" it was all just a metaphor for love). On Wildheart, Miguel makes good on all of his cross-genre dabbling of the past five years, but unlike the track-based experiments that dotted his two prior LPs and five mixtapes, he extrapolates the heavy funk across an entire album.
Miguel has long cited Prince, Freddie Mercury, and James Brown as inspirations, and on Wildheart he works through these icons. The album soars with shiny guitar lines and sky-high vocals, which reflect the mythic possibilities of California and his hometown of L.A. Unlike All I Want Is You or Kaleidoscope Dream, Wildheart is almost entirely self-produced save for a couple of assists, including Cashmere Cat and Benny Blanco on the Cali soul-riffing "…Goingtohell". So Miguel is writing for Miguel, and he knows that his voice, heady like good coffee, will soar over the crunchy bass guitar lines of "A Beautiful Exit" and the sultry, obsessive "FLESH".
When he wants to go digital, on "The Valley" and "Destinado a Morir (Enter.Lewd)", dilated, ragged synths and stretched-out strumming serve as a glowing bedrock over which he exhales explicit lyrics. The titular valley in the former refers to California's porn industry and he sets the scene like an R-rated kid's playground song: "lips, tits, clit, sit." It's the blood-red prelude to Wildheart's tender morning-after first single, "Coffee", and his writing is even raunchier than Kaleidoscope Dream's "Pussy Is Mine". The sequencing belies the real turn-on: Miguel knows where to find those hard-to-reach spots, and will bring you coffee in the morning, too.
Focusing on Wildheart's overt eroticism is one way of listening, but it's impossible to overlook just how seriously he's taking craft. Like, sure, Miguel's take on #surfbort, "Waves", might be a vivid metaphorical construct, but the silky stack of harmonies on the bridge is absolutely stunning—maybe the album's most dazzling moment. Lenny Kravitz, another soul-subverting California dreamer, creates an airless cocoon of lust and lush guitars on "Face the Sun". "What's Normal Anyway" has careful guitar ripples and a steady beat, sturdy footing for Miguel's backstory to all of the skirt-chasing: "Too proper for the black kids, too black for the Mexicans, what's normal anyway." And the quiet moments explode without veering into bombast; think about the simple chord changes and placid drum loop of the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979" with a wistful story about a California stricken of sunlight—and that's "Leaves".
On Wildheart, Miguel complicates his lothario backstory in a way that few of his peers have managed. A song like "What's Normal Anyway" speaks to multiple experiences of alienation, in both life and love. For Miguel, humanity is found between partners and between the sheets. And Wildheart's success might signal a shift in modern R&B, which is to say that perhaps we will finally move on from minimalism and petulant misogyny and sluggish synths to follow Miguel, along with Leon Bridges and Frank Ocean—the latter slated to return this summer—toward the next era of soul, one where sex is not an arbiter of masculinity but something that's simpatico with fun and feelings.
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